Kj's Blog

Dribbles of icy rain freckle my ungloved hands. I hold up my phone because since I’m in familiar settings again (just moved home to the Northwest USA after two years in SE Asia), I keep forgetting my camera at home. Despite the grey, the clouds, the flat light, there’s a tree here, next to a concrete maze of a drive-through bank. The tree is flowering pink. It’s beautiful. And somehow that’s exactly how it feels to be home. Grey, drizzly, clouded, with hints of spring in the air.

I have so much more I could write. But it’s all too overwhelming. I have a conference coming up and an assignment to finish for it that didn’t come in until after I lost my equipment back in Malaysia. My house is being remodeled. I have culture shock. We had issues with our old tenant that made it so I spent last week hauling stuff to the dump. Blah, blah, blah.

But every night I still count my blessings and write the highlights of my day — little blooms in semi-bad weather, hinting at fairer days that hopefully will arrive soon. And also the practice reminds me to keep things in perspective. Nothing is that bad. Many, many things are really good. It's just cloudy enough that sometimes the good stuff is a little too much in shadow. It takes a bit of effort to remember to look and see and smell the flowers when they aren't shining brilliantly in the sun.

I’ve had a heck of an amazing adventure the last two years. The unsettled feeling of returning is annoying and a little dreary. But I wouldn’t trade my adventures of the past two years for all the settled feelings in the world.